


A fork in the road

by aykayem



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-06
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-07 16:59:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/750874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aykayem/pseuds/aykayem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war took someone from everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A fork in the road

It felt as though Draco was waking from a dream when he opened his eyes to the Great Hall and really saw for the first time in days. He had only just blinked, but it was like the blinders had finally come off. His family was with him, his mother fawning over him, her voice soft in his ears though no words registered; even his father seemed to need to connect with them both, a hand on both their shoulders just to show that he was there, he existed, he was supportive. It wasn't enough, but it made a dent in the way Draco could have remembered him. He blinked again, and his life seemed to come to him in flashes. _I'm not dying_ , he thought to himself, those words drowning out the way his parents were asking him if he was all right. He wasn't; he couldn't bear to answer as such. That truth already hung heavy in his chest, weighing him down and detaching him from everyone else.

It could have been worse. He could be dead. His parents could be dead; he could be alone in the world. He knew that he was still better off than some. The Weasleys were in a cluster to one side, obvious by their red hair and the way they were clinging to each other, comforting over the loss of one of their brothers. One of many brothers, but grief they could all share in. They all had loved him, and they had all showed it. The brother had died knowing he was part of something.

Tears pricked Draco's eyes, but wouldn't fall. If he was perfectly honest, he wasn't sure he knew how to cry any more. As though the last year had sapped everything out of him that it took for such a simple function. He closed his eyes again, focused on the spots dotting his eyelids - likely the lights of the Great Hall, the floating candles that had been brought back after everything had ended, but before the clean up truly began. He couldn't bear to look at it any more, not as it was. Not when he could remember like it was yesterday the way he had come through those same doors years ago, an awestruck eleven year old with a brand new wand and a giddy sensation that he could make something of himself here.

He hadn't.

Draco pushed himself up from the bench, offering his parents a word of reassurance that he was fine, that he just needed some air. He could feel their eyes locked on him as he left, even as they moved together, as though somehow that would save them from the potential wrath of all of those they had wronged, whether purposefully or inadvertently. Draco knew that they had enemies now, that meandering about the Great Hall on his own was probably a good way to get himself killed; he didn't really mind it. Not if it helped him clear his head from the noise that cluttered it.

He thought he might be able to find someone he knew in the crowd; there hadn't been that many Slytherins left after everything was said and done, but there had been enough, and enough had been his friends. 'Friends', perhaps; he still didn't know how many of them truly thought anything good of him, or if they too had been lying their entire lives. It occurred to him that he hadn't seen Theo since just after Crabbe- Since after he left the Room of Hidden Things. His mind fluttered to who might have seen him, to who else he might want to check on.

He blinked again. Again, the dots of candlelight flickered on the inside of his eyelids, and he focused on himself instead of everyone and everything around him, instead of the way he could hear someone flinging an insult at him as he passed; he tuned it out, letting it fade back into feigned deafness, overtaken by his heartbeat and the sound of his own breathing instead. Opening his eyes again, Draco began moving with a bit more of a purpose. There were so many dead. So many bodies that remained nameless - if he didn't look at them, they were anonymous; they weren't his classmates, or his classmates' siblings. They too were on the periphery of his acknowledgement, ignored in favour of finding a familiar, and friendly face.

Pansy flung her arms around his shoulders when he found her, though he barely realised that he had done so until she acted. He hugged her back, drawing her close like that would help fend off his inner demons and self-loathing. Draco hadn't done anything during that war except make everything worse, and yet she was still here to help him feel better. He pressed his nose against her hair, inhaling and remembering fourth year, fifth year - a time when everything made a little more sense than it did now. It was strange how someone could make him feel a little bit better, a little bit less numb, even though they hadn't been as close as they had been once before.

"Where's Theo?" He asked after a moment; she froze the moment the name passed his lips, face still pressed against his shoulder, her hands tightening their grip for a moment before she began to draw away. Her hands found his cheeks, her eyes found his, silently pleading, silently apologising while Pansy struggled to find the words.

"I- I'm sorry, Draco." Her words came in a whisper, and in that moment, it was easy to forget that Theo and Pansy weren't that fond of each other. Clashing personalities, for the most part. Draco had never really worried about it overly much, and now it clicked that he wouldn't have to worry about it again. He knew what an apology meant, what the look in her eyes said. She kept speaking, her lips moving to form words that never reached Draco's ears. He couldn't hear anything save the beat of his heart, speeding up from where it had been not moments before. It felt loud in his ears; his blood felt like fire in his veins. His hands shook when he released Pansy, a sudden claustrophobia making him feel as though the entire Great Hall was no longer the welcoming place it once was, but a place of pain and suffering and loss. The dead were the only things he could see, and though his lungs refused to take in enough oxygen, he knew he had to keep moving. He couldn't crumple the way he wanted to, he couldn't just curl up and close his eyes and hope everything went away.

It didn't register that Pansy was calling after him as he forced himself forward, to where the bodies were laid out, row upon row. People he knew, people he didn't know, but virtually all students of Hogwarts at some point in time. Some with mourners set around the body, some without - most without. People had moved away by now, making it easier to find any one person in particular; he didn't have to force his way through a crowd. There were fewer Slytherins lying there than one might have expected, but that did nothing to alleviate the tightness in his chest. His heart was beating fast now, too fast; he felt as though he might pass out before he even got there, and perhaps be taken out with the rest of them. Who would miss him? His parents, of course; perhaps Pansy. Who else?

It would just be another death, another traitor they didn't have to worry about persecuting.

Finally, Theo came into view, lying as still as if he had simply been sleeping. It was impossible to believe that; he was too stiff, too arranged to be asleep; perhaps if they had left him as he had fallen, Draco might have been able to delude himself into his friend being merely unconscious, instead of the alternative. He still couldn't think of it; his chest tightened too much when the thought even threatened to crop up. Hands shaking visibly, Draco dropped to his knees next to Theo's corpse, hesitating before reaching down - his hands lingered above the familiar uniform, unwilling to touch him for fear of ruining the way he remembered him. Even now, though, it was impossible to not see this lifeless form juxtaposed with how Theo had been in life.

Draco's memories seemed suddenly turned on their ear. An image of the pair of them in the library, studying with sweets as incentive to get through a particularly dry chapter, was immediately ruined by an inert stare. He barely suppressed a shiver, suddenly doubling over as the tears that had pricked his eyes before welled up again, blurring his vision further; his hands finally breached the invisible wall that kept them apart before, and he finally clung to his friend in that first stage of mourning, incoherent murmurs of denial spilling from his lips. No one paid him any heed, just as they ignored him before. Now, though grief ought to have humanised him somewhat, he was the recipient of the sneers he had once spread freely around; the tables had turned, and years of poorly treating everyone had driven them all away, to the point that not even an offer of sympathy would come. He didn't expect one; Draco knew he would prefer being alone in his mourning, despite it being as public as anything else that had ever occurred in the Great Hall. Now even if he chose to disappear, the last image anyone would have of him would be of him undone, finally pushed to his limits, and no longer able to deal with whatever came his way. He was broken, something within him snapped past the point of coming back.

It didn't even register to him that the tears he thought he couldn't shed now rolled freely down his face.


End file.
